Book Review: Song of the Sandman (A God in the Shed #2) by J.-F. Dubeau
Title: Song of the Sandman (A God in the Shed #2)
Author: J.-F. Dubeau
Release date: June 16th, 2020
Back in 2019, I read the truly stunning ‘A God in the Shed’ by J.-F. Dubeau. It was a novel about a small town with a horrible past and a secret that they wanted to keep hidden from everyone else. That secret gets exposed and terrible events occur once discovered.
One constant thing I heard about the book was the ending didn’t do it for people (and to be fair this is a very common criticism about 99% of stories). So, I took it with a grain of salt and boy, did I love the ending. BUT. And this is something even Dubeau has stated – because it wasn’t made explicitly clear that was book one of a trilogy, some people found the ending to be too open ended, too many loose ends not tied up.
Now, I ask a question to you? As someone who spends a lot of time in the online dark fiction communities, I somehow didn’t even know this was out. Did you know the sequel was out?
I was so excited to find out it was out, so I snagged a copy for my Kindle and dove in.
What I liked: I’ll do my best to remain as vague as possible here, because this is a sequel and I don’t want to potentially spoil anything from how book one ended or what happens in here. But, the book picks up after the events of ‘A God in the Shed.’ We are reunited with the characters that survived and from that we learn more and more about the Sandmen Cult and how some have a direct link to those within.
Dubeau does a great job of leading us from those events in book one through the events that will ultimately set up book three. There’s a ton of action, some really dark, dark moments and it was great reconnecting with these characters and seeing how they’ve been scarred from book one and how they’re now trying to continue on.
The ending here was phenomenal – but, and I will add this here – there are a number of things not tied up and finished – as this is just the second part of this trilogy.
The epilogue was just fantastic and really worked into the magic that has been discussed and has been growing throughout the first two books. It was a great way to end this one.
What I didn’t like: Book one had a lot of characters, and as it’s been almost exactly three years since I read book one, going into book two, there were a number of them that I had completely forgotten about, so it did take me a minute to get back into the ‘why’s’ of their motives. This book might be better to be read as close to finishing book one as you can.
Why you should buy this: This was a really well done sequel that definitely sets the stage for an explosive finale. The characters are great and the god is such a fantastic creation, I love seeing how it twists and uses these characters as it sees fit.
Definitely a solid sequel and now, I personally, can’t wait to see how Dubeau wraps this one up!
4/5
